Why Do Women Have Longer Lives Than Men

Everywhere in the world women live longer than men - but this was not always the case. The available data from rich countries shows that women didn't live longer than men in the 19th century. What's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? What is the reason is this difference growing in the past? The evidence is sketchy and we only have some solutions. We know there are behavioral, biological, and environmental factors which play a significant role in the longevity of women over men, we don't know the extent to which each factor plays a role.

Independently of the exact weight, اضيق وضعية للجماع we know that a large portion of the reason why women live longer than men do today and not in the past, is to have to do with the fact that certain key non-biological factors have changed. What are these factors that have changed? Some are well known and relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Others are more complicated. For example, there is evidence that in rich countries the female advantage increased in part because infectious diseases used to affect women disproportionately a century ago, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for survivors, ended up raising women's longevity disproportionately.

Everywhere in the world women tend to live longer than men
The first chart below shows life expectancy at birth for men and women. We can see that every country is above the diagonal parity line ; which means that in every country that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that the advantage of women exists in all countries, difference between countries is huge. In Russia women have a longer life span than men. In Bhutan the gap is less than half one year.

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In wealthy countries, the female advantage in longevity was not as great.
Let's examine how the female longevity advantage has changed in the course of time. The chart below shows gender-based and female-specific life expectancy at birth in the US in the years 1790-2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. Men and women living in America are living longer than they did a century ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

And second, there is an ever-widening gap: female advantage in life expectancy used be quite small but it increased substantially over the last century.

It is possible to verify that these points are also applicable to other countries that have data by selecting the "Change country" option on the chart. This includes the UK, France, and Sweden.